


ML Angst Week

by astrangetypeofchemistry



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Day 1: Mistakes/Aftermath, Day 2: Secrets/Lies, Day 3: Family/Friends, Gen, ML Angst Week, No One Is Okay, Warning: Adrien's mental health is not okay, at all, life is tough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 08:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangetypeofchemistry/pseuds/astrangetypeofchemistry
Summary: In which suffering is what makes the character.





	1. The Death Of A Bachelor

**Author's Note:**

> [Prompt list](http://miraculous-weeks.tumblr.com/post/159374160563/angst-week-because-sometimes-we-have-to-put)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien made a terrible mistake, and now he's drowning.

He didn’t mean to. 

Chat Noir stares, the body of his father lying on the ground next to him. He’d just been wandering the mansion, unable to sleep but not wanting to leave. 

_I should’ve left_ , some part of him decides. _This wouldn’t have happened_ _._  

But how was he to know that the same monster he’d spent the past few years chasing was his own father?

His father had jumped at him, hand eagerly reaching for the ring on his finger. He wonders if he’d just gotten desperate. 

_I used cataclysm on my own father’s heart._

It doesn’t register.

* * *

News spreads. Gabriel Agreste collapsed of a heart attack right in front of his son. Hawk Moth no longer sends out akumas. Chat Noir has disappeared. 

Adrien Agreste is an orphan. 

Everything is so quiet around him. Kim is no longer boasting, no longer challenging Alix to loud dares. Alix and Ivan are no longer having boisterous tickle fights. Chloe is no longer proclaiming her tragedies to the world. 

_I killed him. I’m a murderer._

Ladybug is seen travelling all across Paris at night, still searching for her partner. 

He never shows up.

* * *

Adrien takes off the ring. He finds his way back into his father’s safe, and places the brooch there. There’s three miraculouses in there now. He wonders if the peacock was his mother’s. Wonders if their broken little family all had to do with this world. 

There’s no one left to tell him.

* * *

He can’t really remember the exact moment. Can’t remember what happens. He thinks he transformed when he saw the kwami hanging out of his father’s jacket, and called for his power automatically. 

Ladybug is stilll out there, jumping roof to roof. 

Some nights, there are  even videos found of her crying.

* * *

He hasn’t noticed, but Marinette is dwindling just as he is. It’s when they’ve ended up on the same bench too many times, a silence that envelops them not _for_  him, but with him, that he finally sees her bloodshot eyes, or the seemingly permanent frown on her lips. 

They are alone, he thinks, in this downward spiral that they can’t share the reason for. He does not know the story for hers, and she does not know the full story for his. 

He finds it doesn’t particularly bother him, his hand reaching forward for hers. 

This, he feels, is enough for now.

* * *

Eventually Ladybug gives up. Marinette grows out again, makes an effort to remove the silence from her life, smiles and blooms, and fills her day with laughter.

Adrien stays, stuck in his bubble, grief crowding all the space in his heart.

* * *

He stares in the mirror sometimes, his own gaze haunting him like his worst nightmare.


	2. Don't Need Another Perfect Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the secrets she holds and the lies she tells hold Marinette down.

Marinette can’t bear to tell Alya. 

She knows her best friend is worrying, concerned every time she refuses an offer to hang out. Maybe Alya suspects that Marinette is feeling Adrien’s pain, or struggling with the loss of her idol. 

She doesn’t think Alya realizes she’s suffering from the disappearance of her partner.

Time seemed to have stopped. Gabriel Agreste passed away, and with him, Hawkmoth’s reign of terror. Marinette wonders if there’s a connection.

She doesn’t dare ask Adrien, unwilling to shake salt into the wound. 

Chat Noir disappears. She looks for him day and night. Her eyes scan every horizon for him. Her body keeps moving, flying, waiting for him on one rooftop, then the next. _He’s just taking a break,_ she convinces herself. _He’s just tired._

She is too. She’s not sleeping anymore, too busy crying on the roofs as Ladybug. She dodges Alya, turning away whenever she throws a question. Hides her eye bags with concealer, pushing excuses about new inspiration with every yawn. 

And then she’s sitting next to Adrien, and the weight is crushing her. 

_Was your father Hawkmoth?_ She burns.  _Was Chat Noir there that night?_  

_Did he make it out alive?_  

Her mouth opens to form the words, but sobs come out instead.

She still hides. Alya finds her running. Her parents barely see her. And she’s crushing herself under the weight of her two worlds, terrified to let them mingle. 

It’s when she resides in the silence with Adrien that she realizes Chat wouldn’t want this for her. He’d want her to be happy. 

And she tries again, to connect, to reach out, her burning secrets not being enough to weigh her down. And when Alya asks her what happened, she shakes her head, telling her she doesn’t really know.

The lie tastes bitter on her tongue.


	3. Pretend That You're A Ray Of Light When You're A Broken Candle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chloe's worldview is a little too harsh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got too lazy to accent Chloe's name. I'll probably fix it in the future.

As a little girl, Chloe had been used to the constant slamming of doors, of seeing every adult turn a back on her. She remembers talking in a polite tone, exactly the way her mother had taught her, and remembers the answering laughter from every other adult.

 _They just don’t understand me,_  she’d always told herself. _Mommy would never steer me wrong._

And then her mother had hauled ass out of her life, and little Chloe has to reevaluate her life choices.

She doesn’t tend to think about the harsh way she treats others. It’s automatic for her, a little cruelty breeding out of her from the same environment she’d grown up in. She stares at her classmates, like Marinette Dupain-Cheng, or that sickly sweet Rose Lavillant, and wonders how tiring it must be, to always let people dictate how you spend your day. How much energy it must take to act nice, _be_ nice, and always be surrounded by people wanting to steal your energy. 

Cruelty, Chloe finds, is the best way to keep the world from burning you out. 

So it was with shock that she’d arrived home to a hair comb she doesn’t remember buying, a tiny little creature named Pollen facing her, telling her she was chosen to fight the forces of evil. It was one of the few times she’d dared to hope. 

They had a deal. Chloe would feed Pollen, and in turn, Pollen would transform her into a hero with the next akuma. She’d lain in wait, eagerly, but refusing to let anyone see.

And then two weeks had passed, and her childhood best friend’s father had passed away. Akuma attacks, almost as a chain reaction, had ceased. Chat Noir had disappeared. And Ladybug had desperately searched, before giving up herself. And Chloe had never had her chance to be a hero.

She stares at Adrien, at the way he hides away from the world. There’s always been a bond between them, borne out of neglect and the same miserable loneliness they’d both felt subjected to. Maybe Adrien’s had been harsher, being isolated in a mansion all on his own, but it didn’t lessen Chloe’s any. 

The only difference between them had been that Adrien bred kindness, and Chloe bred a distance between the world and her innocence. 

She doesn’t see that kindness now, immersed as she is in seeing his pain. Maybe she’s a little quieter, but she is mourning for so much, for the same pain that had united her and Adrien. It’s not fair, she thinks, that Adrien had chosen to wear his heart on the sleeve, only for the world and circumstances to destroy it. 

They both deserved parents, and only had mothers that left them, fathers whose affections were materialistic. 

She’d come to a quiet decision years ago, a thought she’d never really given much voice to. It was her own guilty little pleasure, a little comfort in the dead walls of her home. 

Staring at Adrien now, though, Chloe questions whether a neglectful father actually is better than no father at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely comments. Seriously. You rock.

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out on [tumblr](http://queerinette.tumblr.com/).


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